Before now, the single men I wanted to date weren't interested in nubile twenty-somethings — at least not exclusively — and even in my mid-thirties competition from younger women didn't concern me. I had time, and if someone wanted to get up in my grill about having kids eventually, well, my mom had me when she was 38 and I turned out mostly okay. But now I'm encountering divorcees and mid-life crises and men who themselves lie about their ages and cheekily confess, "Haha, just hoping you'd be so charmed by the time you clicked that it wouldn't matter!

So, is lying the answer? My friend Chelsea G. Summers, who is 54, is firmly in favor of skimming a few years off one's age, though always coming correct with current photos. Like me, she straddles the digital divide; we remember a time before DOS, but not a lot of dating without the accompanying click and beep of a modem. I had about a year-long run of being semi-seduced by men to have them hightail it, like scared little bunnies.

It was making me feel like crap, so I went to Europe, specifically Stockholm, and immediately got laid. For the time being, going to Europe is off the table for me, if only because I hid my passport from myself after a long-distance tryst with someone I'd met on a work trip went sideways.

Luckily, OKCupid's data is much more optimistic than my friend Chelsea. Data scientist Dale Markowitz wrote via email, "When it comes to receiving quality messages on OkCupid that is, first messages that turn into conversations , there is no penalty to being 40 or over.

In fact, the proportion of men to women on OkCupid grows with age; women over 40 get on average more messages than women under 40, and have the pick of the litter, so to speak. If Markowitz is right, then perhaps being 40 could be to my advantage. Michael, a gorgeous musician who used to bartend at my local watering hole, is one such sensitive younger dude; he's an old hand at online dating whose sexploits have singed the eyebrows right off my face, but he's also articulate, smart and funny.

You might recognize him from being quoted at length in Vanity Fair' s "Tinder and the Dawn of the 'Dating Apocalypse'" story, which makes him an expert of sorts.

Michael also prefers older women though I assume he wouldn't kick a younger woman out of his bed for eating crackers. My current girlfriend is four years older than me, but I definitely see her as my equal. When I was younger, I saw the girls and the guys, for that matter my age to be kids, which I was too. Older women were how I escaped that feeling. Michael isn't alone in his desires though they're not always reciprocated.

They were like 'Would you consider a guy below your age range? Like they think I know shit about sex? And can teach their useless baby bodies what to do? While I have encountered a few boychiks who are curious about bedding older ladies and nothing more, my inbox hasn't been a total waste of space. There has been no shortage of men under 39 sending me messages and little "likes" through the ether.

And while they're not all necessarily piquing my interest, they're also not the horrible fuckboys whose janky messages and blurry cock shots you see screenshotted on Tumblr and Instagram. Then there are the men I've met online who are actually my age, chronologically and emotionally, who seem to click with my weirdness in all the right ways.